


neverending;

by glittercake



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Depression, Grief/Mourning, Happy/Bittersweet Ending, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Presumed immortality, Reincarnation, Soulmates, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, the dark side of soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:34:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27331276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittercake/pseuds/glittercake
Summary: Sam passes away after a long and happy life with Bucky, but Bucky never ages and life keeps introducing him to Sam's reincarnates for the next 156 years.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Others, James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Comments: 27
Kudos: 133





	neverending;

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of channeling emotions into writing. Hope y'all have some tissues or perhaps a spare heart lying around.

**14 June 2063**

The first time Sam Wilson dies, he is 85. He dies knowing Bucky loves him; he dies knowing he helped save the world and countless lives. He is grey and frail and bed-ridden, but he has lived a beautiful life. 

His last words to Bucky is a slow rasp of air, "You and me. Always."

He dies with his hand in his husband's. 

And Bucky, crying down into their clasped fingers, doesn't look a day over 35. 

He and Sarah's son bury Sam with a beautiful ceremony in St. John's. There are 85 roses along the aisle; there is a picture of him in his star-spangled suit, the American flag spread out over his coffin. And when they lower him into the ground, three shots resound through the air. 

They hand Bucky the flag, and he sits there staring at it long after everyone's gone. A lost soldier in an empty graveyard.

That night he holds it folded to his chest and cries, and cries, and he never sleeps peacefully again. 

* * *

**5 August 2071**

Years go by, and he starts thinking the most atrocious thing Hydra had done to him wasn't torture. It wasn't excavating his memories, stealing his life, not even when they attached the arm to him with no courtesy of anesthesia. 

It is this. Whatever swims through his veins and doesn't let him die or age. He's felt pain, he's felt loneliness, but nothing quite like this. Everyone he knows and loves has gone. He misses Sam like his lungs would miss air, he misses Sam's scent, his hands, his laugh. He had to watch Sam grow older by the day, struggle to walk, to see, to hear, and yet Bucky remained unchanged by time. 

This pain never subsides. This loneliness never lightens. And he's left here to feel every agonizing second of it, all while he was supposed to be with Sam. For better or for worse. It is unbearable. 

So he downs four handfuls of some colorful pills from the bathroom cabinet. 

He wakes up sweating it out a few hours later, and a sound breaks in his throat that echoes through the emptiness around him.

* * *

They didn't just create a super-assassin, he realizes one day, they created an immortal.

* * *

He makes himself disappear before they lock him up in another lab. 

* * *

**6 January 2093**

He's strolling through a supermarket, still buying Sam's favorite snacks when he meets Joshua. 

He heads toward a guy inspecting cereal up ahead. His cart blocks the path.

"Hey man, can you move your cart up," Bucky says to him, trying to pass but not bothering to look up.

And the guy says, "No." 

Bucky's gaze whips up, and they lock eyes. In a place he thought he had buried, something deep in Bucky sparks to life and tells him he needs to be here. He needs to meet this man; something inside of him is tethered here.

He's about twenty-five, devastatingly beautiful, brown-skinned, broad, wearing a football jersey with two dog tags hanging out the collar. United States Air Force.

A smile spreads onto his lips, and it hits Bucky like a sack of rocks. The little gap between his two front teeth. His long lashes curling upward. Bucky would know him anywhere, the warmth of him, the way Sam felt even from a distance. He has yearned for that warmth for decades now.

He keeps himself from saying Sam's name like a fool because it couldn't possibly be. But then again, the same applies to Bucky- he shouldn't still be alive, yet here he is. 

The man folds his arms, says, "There's a pass." 

Bucky straightens up, gets himself to speak somehow, "Yeah? And what's that?" 

Then he goes meek, soft. His eyes flick over Bucky with nervous curiosity, "Your number, maybe?" 

They're together for a couple of years.

At first, Bucky thought he had lost his mind in mourning, that he'd been reaching for something that had long since gone.

But then he checked Josh's birth certificate. 14 June 2063.

And Josh is Sam in every last way, his body, his mind. Bucky feels him whenever they touch when they make love and never questions a damn thing. He gives Josh everything he can, offers it all up; he loves him because it's his Sam that has come back to him. 

Josh flies fighter jets. Free in his sky like a bird, an eagle... a falcon. Bucky watches in wonder, and he feeds off Josh's adrenaline when he lands, he lets it all course through him. 

Sometimes Josh takes him up in a civilian craft and puts his hand on Bucky's thigh, and it feels like 2025 in Sam's arms, soaring, saving the world. The first time Bucky told Sam he loved him was up in the air, flying over the Pacific.

Josh smiles at him in the bright sunlight, gap-toothed, beautiful, young. 

And all he sees is Sam. 

* * *

**30 October 2101**

Joshua dies in combat. His jet is coal and ashes. 

Bucky and Josh's family bury an empty coffin in Arlington. 

Three shots and they hand Bucky a folded flag again.

He sits in the cemetery until night falls and wonders what a goddamn sick joke this is.

* * *

He searches. Because now he knows. 

He searches: Gap-toothed, wings, that everlasting warmth.

If he found him once, he'll find him again. Sam is never gone. 

He roams around sick for decades, half whole, numb, and looks at every smile he sees in hopes that it's Sam. He searches the mirror too for any sign of ageing, grey hairs in his beard, wrinkles beside his eyes. Nothing ever shows up. He stays desperately alone as the world changes around him, as everything keeps moving forward except him.

He's lived long enough to see history repeat itself over and over by now. 

The buildings get so high they have no end. Everyone's got Howard's flying car, ain't anything special anymore. Everything is neon lights and fast-moving. Digital, A.I, incomprehensible. 

Bucky fits right in with his mechanical arm. He races virtual bikes to pass the time: a set of Experiencer disks and a pair of headphones, and his consciousness teleports to a different place while his body lies lifeless on his bed in a scantly decorated apartment.

* * *

**31 December 2146**

That's when he meets Kaito. Japanese V.R racing champion, gap-toothed, adored by the masses. Massive white wings on the side of his bike. At first he doubts it, Kai is too flashy and cocksure.

But then they're parallel on the track, top speed, grinning at each other through their helmets, and Bucky feels a deep, warm, blush spread through him. The way Sam made him feel. A feeling like an anchor falling to the depths to steady a floating ship. 

A new racer flies past overhead, a blitzing streak of pink, faster than they've ever seen before.

Bucky shouts, "What the hell was that??" 

And Kai calls back, "Don't know, man! Everyone's got a gimmick now!" and speeds up. 

Bucky just about starts crying and chases after him, chases after Sam, flushed with goosebumps, faster than the speed of light.

Kai wins. He smirks at Bucky on the 2nd pedestal. He's gorgeous and bright and holds his trophy up high but his eyes never leave Bucky.

Later he pulls Bucky into an alley and fucks him up against a wall, neon lights above them, shuddering pleasure between them. 

Because his lips feel like Sam's, the way his breath hitches sounds like Sam, his touch, his heartbeat. It's Sam. Bucky cries silently when he comes, thinks:  _ God, I've missed you, I love you, I found you. _

He meets Kai back in reality, and for the first time in many, many years, Bucky's life seems brighter again. They spend less and less time in V.R Racing and more and more together. It's a whirlwind, passionate, and raw, and he loses his heart faster than he meant to. 

But Kai stays with him despite Bucky expecting to lose him around every corner. He loves him with all that he is; he never lets Kai go, follows him like a shadow. They buy a big house outside the city and celebrate Kai's birthday there every year, October 30th.

Kai has no questions about Bucky's unchanging appearance. Bucky never tells him either. It's just something they both know and accept because they're meant to be. It's stronger than any doubt.

They live a long, blissful and happy life together.

* * *

**1 May 2186**

Before the last breath finally seeps from Kai's lips, at 85 years old, he takes Bucky's face in his frail hands.

"You are always mine," he says, but his eyes are long gone. Only his soul is left now. 

Eyes wet, Bucky tells him, "I am tired of losing you."

And Kai smiles at him, but he's Sam, and he is Josh, and Bucky's world falls apart all over again.

* * *

He is depleted and empty. The thought of another lifetime lonely and tethered to someone who is no longer around… he is tired beyond repair. 

He wants to go home. 

And home is not here on earth anymore.

* * *

**24 April 2216**

Brooklyn is the closest he gets to home. He thinks Steve got lucky, didn't get some knockoff version of the serum, didn't become neverending. He died a few years after Peggy. The way it's supposed to be. 

He climbs to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge and stands there in the cutting wind for far too long. The sky is orange and deep grey, and the river is tumultuous black beneath. It's a hell of a way down. Should do the trick. It should be enough to end it. 

He's ready to leap when a voice like summer thunder says, "Hey man," Something wakes up inside and binds him to this stranger he has not even laid eyes on.

And because he knows what's coming, he cries in absolute miserable exhaustion. He sobs, saying, "No, no no no…" shaking his head, not looking at the man. How many more times, how many more Sams?

"Yeah. Man, look, you don't wanna do this. Whatever it is, let's talk about it, huh?" 

Bucky laughs, "I really do. You got no idea, pal. Fuck, you got no idea." 

"I don't believe that. Hey, what's your name, huh?" he says.

Bucky stays quiet. Tries to force himself to jump. But the rescueman keeps talking like they're trained to do.

"I'm Danny. Mind if I just sit here for a while?" 

And so he does, and Bucky holds on to the metal wires while Danny talks. 

Bucky inhales and blows it out, and decides to see what the next fifty years or so of his life will look like. 

White guy this time, broad shoulders, handsome, and he's hooked up to the rescue helicopter hovering above them. Bucky huffs out a laugh. Always wings. Goddamnit Sam.

The guy's phone rings halfway through his speech about life and living and how wonderful it all is. "Shit. Hold on," he says and moves to silence it.

And then Bucky notices his dreamy lock screen: Danny and a woman showing off a sparkling new diamond on her left hand.  _ Oh god. Of course, _ he thinks,  _ of course, it wouldn't be this easy. _ All this to find Sam devoted to another. 

For his sins, he must atone, he thinks. A lifetime for a life. It's the only explanation. 

His tears whip away in the wind, and Danny doesn't see them when he turns to smile at Bucky. Long dark lashes. Gap toothed. 

"My fiancé," he says, blushing when he looks up again, "Hey, you got anyone special? Tell me 'bout them."

Bucky tries to smile back, but he doesn't think it comes out that way. They just stare at each other for a few seconds before something inside Bucky speaks. 

"Sam, let me go." he says, "Let me go. I can't do this anymore. Please, please, Sam, let me go." warm tears bubble from his raw eyes, stinging. "Baby please—"

And, instead of frowning at Bucky's request, voidness fills Danny's eyes, and he stares into the orange sky over Bucky's shoulder. 

But his mouth says, "It's not time, Buck. Not yet." 

So Bucky surrenders and allows Danny to take him up in the helicopter. The hospital keeps him for a week and Danny checks on him every night, sneaks him cookies and fudge and fresh lemonade from home.

He meets Danny's fiancé. They invite him over a lot, for dinner and barbecues, and on weekends he repairs old cars with Danny. They grow closer and closer, and it's an everlasting ache in Bucky's chest to see him. 

Yet he can't let go. He can't walk away from Danny's smile, from his warmth, from his laughter. Bucky loves him silently. At his wedding as his best man, Bucky loves him. When they find out they're expecting, Bucky loves him. When they tell him they'll name the baby Ivory James after Danny's best friend, he loves him even more.

All Bucky sees is Danny's sparkling brown eyes, the small dimple beside his mouth corner. Sam. He sees Sam every day, and it kills him slowly and beautifully. Because their love is still something wondrous even like this. 

On 1 May, they host Danny's 33rd birthday party, and they both get absolutely shitfaced in the spirit of celebration or perhaps, in Bucky's case, utter misery.

Danny finds him sitting on the deck chairs just after midnight and pulls one up for himself. Close to Bucky, head on his shoulder, the way he does sometimes without realizing. 

His eyes are glassy and soft; Bucky's are numb. 

He looks up, intoxicated, eyes wide, stunning, and Bucky wonders what it'll feel like to kiss him this time. He wonders how Danny's hands will feel on him, how his voice would sound buried in Bucky's neck. He wonders often if Danny thinks about it too the way he looks at Bucky sometimes, too long, lingering. 

He looks away quickly. Because he also wonders how he'll lose Sam this time. What'll take Danny? Old age, an accident, illness. 

And he wonders if not touching him, not knowing, will make it any easier. 

* * *

**10 February 2219**

Turns out, the answer is neither of those things.

Bucky Barnes dies early one morning alone in his New York apartment.

He feels it coming when he wakes from a dream- a different tremor in his body, a sluggish weakness he's never been allowed before. A heartbeat just not right, an ache inside he can't explain and it won't subside.

The last time he felt it was in 1943 under Zola's knife. He remembers thinking he's going to die. He remembers fighting then, trying  _ not  _ to die while strapped to Hydra's table.

But now, as the same dread creeps up his spine, he smiles.

He starts laughing as a heart attack renders him to pieces. It's a sharp, burning, all-consuming pain. His muscles contract, and he finally falls to the floor. 

He doesn't fight this time; he just laughs wetly and cries and chokes on the pain, "Finally." He cries, "Oh, god, finally."

And a voice tells him, "Come to me." 

* * *

**10 February 2219**

Ivory James is born at 4:54 am, with a bright red birthmark spreading down her left arm and a mop of thick brown hair.

* * *

The next Bucky blinks, he's bathed in incandescent brightness. 

For a second, he thinks, _ please God, no, don't bring me back again _ , but then he sits up. 

It's the inside of a small, blue Volkswagen Beetle. The seat's reclined, there's a long stretch of road and endless countryside ahead. The sun bakes warm from above, and then a voice speaks from the left of him.

God, he'd missed it, the playful rolling lilt, the sweet tenderness of it. Harlem.

"Took you long enough," Sam says. 

When Bucky turns, he's standing there in a white t-shirt and blue jeans, and he's young and beautiful and raising an eyebrow at Bucky.

The tears come hot and fast, his hands come up to his face to stop it, and Sam comes toward him, placing two coffees down on the Beatle's roof.

"Oh, sweetheart," Bucky says, getting out, "Jesus, I missed you." and he swings his arms around Sam's neck and holds him close, "I've missed you for so long. My whole life."

"It's okay," Sam says, pulling him tight and close, "Ain't leaving again. Just you and me now." 

And Bucky can't imagine anything better. "I'm home," he says. His hand cradles the back of Sam's head, lips brushing against his cheek, staying close to let in all the warmth that he had lost. 

Sam's arms circle his waist, his mouth is soft and alive in Bucky's neck, "Yeah, you are." he pulls back and smiles. Gap-toothed, narrowed eyes and curling lashes, "Wanna get out of here?" 

Bucky nods, follows Sam to the car and does not let go of his hand even for a second. 

They drive off into nowhere's sunset, with their fingers laced together like the day they first said goodbye.

And sometimes, when Bucky looks over at the driver's seat, it's Josh in the pilot's cabin, sometimes it's Kai on his bike, and sometimes it's Danny dangling from a helicopter. 

But it's always Sam Wilson.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr too: [glittercake](https://glittercake.tumblr.com/)


End file.
